


Offscreen

by The_Exile



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Breaking the Fourth Wall, Dimension Travel, Gen, Pre-Game(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-24
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-12-06 12:12:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11600388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Exile/pseuds/The_Exile
Summary: Sans wasn't supposed to stray from the beaten path when he went Offscreen.Papyrus wasn't supposed to follow his brother Offscreen.There weren't supposed to be other people Offscreen.





	Offscreen

Always follow your mentor. Always keep to the path he creates, behind the wards he puts up. Never forget that going Offscreen is to open yourself to the primal forces of chaos, to the space between worlds, the stuff of raw unformed matter, and that literally anything could happen. 

If you see something in there, no matter how fascinating it is, don't stare at it for too long. Don't turn your back on your mentor. Never forget what you're doing and where you're going, even for a second.

There weren't many rules. Most of the time Sans remembered them. He had faced the bad consequences of forgetting enough times - he would probably never see through that eye again. He hated to break Gaster's trust in him. This was an emergency, though, when it concerned his brother.

Paps wasn't supposed to follow him Offscreen. He was younger and hadn't been trained to this level and he wasn't even very good at complicated stuff. He said he wanted to be a Royal Guard, for Dog's sake, why was he even interested in advanced interdimensional travel? You know why, Sans told himself, because his brother was doing it and Paps always wants to be involved in everything his brother is doing, good idea or no. Most of the time it was cute except when he was trying to see Toriel in private or when he had to wade through a maelstrom of raging static that literally cut through the fundamental coding of his existence in the Universe, leaving him bleeding broken words and motes of light from his very soul, to snatch his brother who was spinning uncontrollably deeper into the wilds of the Universe, the ocean of meaningless data. 

And then there was the one time he had seen a soul who wasn't Paps or Gaster or himself reflected back at him. The soul hadn't even been a monster. It hadn't been white but purple, like the weird tea Muffet served when she wasn't trying to make him drink spiders. The soul was so small and new but so radiant and powerful. Paps had been missing then, too, and his brother had found him curled up, sobbing, inside a paper nest, a pile of pages from a faded old notebook, each one with a huge word written on it, a soothing, comforting word that Sans understood was the only thing keeping his brother alive right now. 

As well as the usual verbal berating (it didn't hurt as much today because the words from the book were still scrolling across their minds) followed by a psychokinetic slap across each of their faces (how did it hurt so much when they didn't have skin?) Gaster had promised them never to tell anyone what they had seen, even Asgore, especially not Alphys. "For our sakes," their mentor told them, "For your sakes and everyone else's and your new friend's sake too, don't tell anyone except me what else you see of her or anyone you think might be related to her."

Neither of them had said it was a girl. They couldn't tell, with disembodied souls. The skeletons shrugged and went back to their business, Paps promising not to pull such a stupid stunt again but lying as usual. They meant it about not telling anyone that the girl was there, though.

Sans guessed she was found anyway, mind you, because Asgore had a very similar one in those cannisters of his and she hadn't come back to help Paps this time.

Sans was on his own out there from now on.


End file.
